A
series of demands and campaigns of union representatives in individual countries have already been examined in the chapters on infor-mal work and export processing zones (EPZs).On the following pages, their objectives are
placed in a strategic orientation framework. On this basis proposals for action will then be de-rived for church groups, women and youth or-ganisations and networks in Germany and at the international level.
5.1 Strategic orientation framework
tiatives focus on a voluntary self-commitment on the part of multinational enterprises to pursue a policy of global social responsibility and inde-pendent verifi cation systems, as their buying and procurement practices encourage these enter-prises to systematically abuse wor kers’ rights in their global supply chains. Other initiatives seek a legally binding obligation on the part of enter-prises as a response to neo-liberal privatisation policy in labour and social law such as, for exam-ple, the “Corporate Accountability” (CorA) net-work in Germany and its European counterpart, the “European Coalition for Corporate Justice”
(ECCJ), headquartered in Brussels.
The demands forwarded in the Decent Work Agenda of the ILO should go beyond the legal status of voluntary obligations to also be legally binding on states and international organisations and backed up by sanctions so that they can have a sustained impact. Strategies along these lines are being pursued, for example, by CorA and the ECCJ with their demands for a legally binding corporate reporting system, socially responsible public procurement or a strengthening of con-sumer rights (see below).
UNIFEM demands
Decent work and social security are inconceiv-able without a reorientation of the world econ-omy in a manner which is just in gender terms.
One key question, as it were, is the need to elimi-nate the gender-specifi c division of labour, the importance of which has been underscored by UNIFEM again and again over the last few years.
UNIFEM views a reassignment and reassess-ment of all areas of work performed in society to be the key to overcoming discrimination against women in the working world as well as society.
For this reason UNIFEM is calling for the inclu-sion of unpaid reproductive work in national income accounting (UNIFEM 2005), thereby addressing one of the core demands framed by the UN World Women’s Conference in Beijing in 1995. This conference recommended, for exam-ple, the review of public budgets in terms of their gender-specifi c impact (gender budgeting – see Glossary) as a key instrument in eliminating dis-crimination against women. Gender budgeting programmes have in the meantime been insti-tuted in many countries.
In implementing the following proposals for action, the ILO and UNIFEM demands need to be tightly interlinked – i.e. initiatives aimed at pro-moting respect for women’s rights should focus on all areas of women’s work.
Flashmob action in an Aldi branch in Bonn (photograph: Aktionsbündnis Gerechter Welthandel Bonn)
a. Demands addressed to
governments: legally binding global social accountability for business enterprises
Headlines in the world press and a large number of studies have shown in recent years that ex-isting legal instruments i.e. national labour and social laws, UN and ILO obligations such as, for example, the UN Human Rights Charter, the UN Covenant for Economic, Social and Cultural Rights and the core labour standards of the ILO – will not suffi ce in the face of underlying condi-tions of globalisation to implement fundamental labour, social and women’s rights worldwide.
With a view to imposing a legally binding glo-bal social accountabilitzy of multinational en-terprises, civil society organisations have under-taken new legislative initiatives along the lines of the ILO’s core labour standards in recent years.
Some of them are presented in the following.
Binding accountability requirements and re-porting obligations for business enterprises Business enterprises should publish transparent, comparable information free of charge which shows how they respect human rights as well as social and environmental standards along the value chain under their infl uence.
The European Parliament demanded such a statutory obligation in the form of resolutions as far back as 1999 and 2001, calling for these once again – along with additional binding obli-gations for multinational enterprises – but in wa-tered-down form in a resolution it adopted on 13 March 2007. The EU Commission, on the other hand, has focused on a voluntary corporate so-cial responsibility (CSR) strategy (EU Commission 2006b).
Founded in 2006, the Network for Corporate Accountability (CorA) in Germany, with more than 30 organisations, associations and trade unions as members, is working among other things for a binding reporting obligation on the part of enterprises. It has been pursuing this goal at the European level since 2006 in the ECCJ Al-liance. Initial success in this direction has been
attained by an alliance of non-governmental organisations (Amnesty International, Friends of the Earth, Action Aid, etc.) in Great Britain: their campaign contributed to the so-called Com-panies Act being adopted at the end of 2006, under which enterprises listed on the stock ex-change are subjected to the obligation to report on how they abide by and respect social and en-vironmental standards in their domain of infl u-ence.
CorA seeks to infl uence policy-makers to insti-tute binding reporting requirements for all busi-ness enterprises – regardless of their legal status.
Supermarket initiative calls for regulation of the purchasing power of commercial and trading enterprises
A supermarket initiative consisting of 19 organi-sations from the areas of the environment, de-velopment, small farm agriculture and trade un-ions began addressing the public in September 2008. They are calling upon the Federal German Anti-Trust Agency to review the purchasing pow-er of suppow-ermarket chains including discountpow-ers in terms of adherence to social and environmen-tal standards across their entire supply chain.
They are appealing to members of the German Bundestag and the Federal German government in an effort to obtain protection for employees, small farmers and suppliers in Germany, the EU and the developing countries along with con-sumers from any abuse of purchasing power by supermarket chains.
This initiative is also working with other or-ganisations at the European Parliament and the EU Commission and demanding that the EU Competition Commission review the effects of concentrations of business enterprises on suppli-ers, employees and consumers (www.responsi-ble-purchasing.org).
Amendment of the Consumer Information Act
The German Consumer Information Act (Ver-braucherinformationsgesetz), which went into effect in Germany on 1 May 2008, offers an ad-ditional, but longer-term approach for initiatives along the lines of a global social obligation on
5.2 Proposals for action by civil society organisations and networks
the part of business enterprises. This law is in need of urgent amendment, as it is virtually de-void of impact in its present-day version, as an assessment drawn by Food Watch after the fi rst six months of its effect concluded.
The current Consumer Information Act merely obligates the responsible government authori-ties, and not business enterprises, to provide information on the quality of foodstuffs and fod-der, cosmetics and consumer goods such as, for example, toys and clothing. An initial revue has been announced for 2010. At the same time as the Consumer Information Act went into effect, the existing Foodstuffs and Fodder Code was re-vised so as to now require authorities to report to the public on health risks posed by foodstuffs, fodder and consumer goods (previously the law only stipulated that public authorities “may” in-form the public).
In spite of public protests by political parties (the Greens and the Left) and consumer organi-sations since the fi rst draft Consumer Informa-tion Act was issued in 2001 until it was passed in 2007, the scope of the law has been considerably narrowed. Defi cits exist above all in the possibil-ity for business enterprises to refuse to disclose
information by citing the need to protect busi-ness secrets, and in the charging of fees for work performed by governmental authorities in ans-wering questions of consumers.
The objective behind an improved Consumer Information Act is to protect consumers in the future from contributing to violations of workers’
and women’s rights through their consumption.
The Consumer Information Act is aimed at tributing to the promotion of sustainable con-sumption patterns in this manner.
The German Clean Clothes Campaign has de-veloped sample letters to be sent to the govern-ment authorities in charge with the aim of summing up experience with the Consumer In-formation Act and forwarding demands for addi-tional improvements by the time the fi rst revision of the act is due in 2010.
b. Demands addressed to business enterprises
Numerous multinational enterprises have been forced to report on their social responsibility towards employees in global supply factories The Aldi campaign in Essen in September 2008 (photograph: Essen Press Offi ce)
through public campaigns and protest cam-paigns sponsored by international networks and individuals since the beginning of the 1990s.
Their protest year-in year-out to the effect that multinational trading and commercial enterpris-es are not renterpris-esponsible for labour law and social law issues with legally independent suppliers has become less and less tenable with the growing number of analyses of the control of global value chains by multinational enterprises and the eco-nomic dependence of suppliers (Gereffi 2005) and with the growing number of case stu dies which have been published on violations of workers’ rights, particularly among textile sup-pliers.
In addition to the world textiles and cloth-ing industry, numerous other sectors have also been the subject of such studies over the last few years. This has been the case with the global toy, electronics, fl ower, carpet, stone and diamond industries, for example. The results of these stud-ies are often used in the campaigns and public-relations work of numerous alliances of non-governmental organisations and trade unions in the industrialised and developing countries (for example, the PC Global Campaign of WEED, Make IT Fair of German Watch, the fairplay cam-paigns of Misereor, camcam-paigns by SÜDWIND on the local procurement of stones from China and India and adherence to social standards in the prospecting for and processing of diamonds).
A revision of purchasing practices towards suppliers should be at the focus of demands by consumers levied at business enterprises, as violations of workers’ and women’s rights in the global supply chains of multinational trading and commercial enterprises are to a considerable de-gree a product of increasingly tough price and delivery-time policies towards suppliers engaged in international competition.
Given the experience gained to date in global campaigns by consumers, church groups, wom-en’s organisations, etc., the following minimum requirements, which have not been implement-ed by most business enterprises in the world, need to be respected:
The list of “clean” working conditions, adher-ence to which business enterprises should en-force among their suppliers, is based on per-tinent conventions (or the recommendation) of the ILO, i.e. the prohibition against forced
labour, discrimination on the basis of gender and child labour, the freedom of association and the right to collective bargaining, a wage suffi cient to meet the costs of living, hours of work, health and safety standards and perma-nent job positions.
As a result of their economic power, multina-tional import companies must bear the main responsibility for adherence to labour stand-ards by global suppliers and not pass this responsibility on to their suppliers.
An independent watchdog institution is need-ed to monitor respect for labour standards.
The various parties involved – including the unions representing employees – should be represented in this institution.
The procedure by which employees can lodge complaints must be independent.
Transparency regarding the results of inde-pendent review and corrective measures is to be guaranteed through continuous reporting.
Adherence to labour standards must be re-viewed in the entire supply chain, i.e. at di-rect and indidi-rect suppliers (Wick 2007: 76 et seqq.).
On the whole, campaigns focusing on multi-national enterprises are above all a means of raising public awareness and less a means of ob-taining sustainable improvements in the social situation of employees. Binding rules instituted at the state level and backed by sanctions, rather, are what is required here.
c. Social alliances
As this publication shows, the social distortions caused by the neo-liberal economic system and the patriarchal gender system come together in the informal economy and export promo-tion zones similar to in a crucible. Effectively counteracting these distortions with the aim of re aligning economic production and gender re-lations requires not only determination on the part of individuals and individual organisations – it also demands their collaboration in local and international alliances in order to achieve a greater impact.
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